Money Manager Settles SEC Market-Timing Case

By Staff Writer

July 24, 2006 at 12:55 PM

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A Kansas fund company has agreed to pay a total of $57 million to settle investigations concerning allegations that the company failed to stop speculators from using its funds to time the market.

Waddell & Reed Financial Inc., Overland Park, Kan., negotiated the settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and state regulators in Kansas and New York.

Regulators found that Waddell & Reed began to take some steps to track and restrict market timers' rapid trading in 2001 but failed to control the market timers until at least late 2003.

The allegations concern Waddell & Reed's mutual funds and do not relate to any variable annuity operations.

Waddell & Reed has neither admitted nor denied regulators' allegations.

The company says it will pay a total of $50 million to the affected funds.

The company also will pay $2 million to a Kansas investor education fund, and, at the request of New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, it will use $5 million a year for 5 years to reduce management fees at the affected funds.

"These settlements have been in process for some time and relate to matters well in our past," Waddell & Reed Chief Executive Henry Herrmann says in a statement. "Their completion is a positive event."

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